A touching expression of ontological gratitude ...
or a sinister form of zen fascism?
I.
Anyone who has recently visited a UK hospital will doubtless be as astonished as I was by the amount of time, effort, and money that is put into the promotion of so-called NHS values, which, essentially, reduce to three key terms: respect, equality, and compassion.
All fair enough, you might think. But at Queen's Hospital, in Romford, Essex [1] - which happens to be my local hospital - they have really gone to town and decided to expand upon the NHS vision, wildly proliferating values in what might almost be described as a metastatic manner.
This is illustrated by the above poster, designed by a team determined to list as many moral adjectives as they can think of, in order to thank patients, visitors, and staff for being (amongst other things) human, obliging one to wonder who or what they feared they might encounter stalking the wards.
Personally - and for the record - I've no objection to being treated by a robot, an alien, or a highly trained chimp, provided they are competent and go about their business with the minimum of fuss.
And not only do I not care if they lack the (all too) human touch, but I don't expect them to be fun either; there are far too many idiots in far too many professional roles - doctors, teachers, trendy vicars and tubby office managers - posing as chilled out entertainers.
II.
But who is responsible for this zen fascist propaganda - or The Pride Way [2] - in our hospitals?
Well, in my region - Barking, Havering and Redbridge - the team responsible for teaching, coaching and empowering staff in The Pride Way is called the Kaizen Promotion Office. Based at Queen's Hospital, but working across all Trust sites, the KPO are dedicated to excellence and have adopted their methodology from the Virginia Mason Institute (part of the Virginia Mason Medical Centre in Seattle):
"Our KPO Team of specialists have been trained and mentored in The Pride
Way tools and methodologies, and these tools have in turn been taught to
others in the Trust through the many training and support opportunities
provided by the Team, through both formal and informal training,
coaching, Rapid Process Improvements Workshops (RPIW) and Kaizen
events." [3]
This way of speaking, thinking, and working could, of course, only have roots in the United States. And so now everything begins to make sense ...
The irony is that the British people pride themselves on the (supposedly) unique nature of their health care system and fear it being sold off to the Americans. But the latter - over-paid, over-earnest, and over-keen on woke corporate bullshit - are already over here ...
Notes
[1] Along with King George Hospital, in Goodmayes, Queen's Hospital is part the of Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS University Hospitals Trust which also operates a number of clinics at sites in the surrounding areas.
[2] PRIDE is an acronym for the values and behaviours which staff at BHR hospitals are expected to embody: Passion, Responsibility, Innovation, Drive, and Empowerment. To learn more about how these terms are being used, visit https://www.bhrhospitals.nhs.uk/our-vision-and-values/
[3] I'm quoting from https://www.bhrhospitals.nhs.uk/the-pride-way/
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